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Longtime MLB employee: Baseball 'dying' is a 'tired, misinformed' statement

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Oct 13, 2015.

  1. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Of course (to the degree it can be calculated).

    Baseball TV rights came in at $141 million in 1986.
    They are around $800 million now.

    According to an online CPI calculator, $141 million in 1986 has the same buying power as $307 million today.

    So TV is paying $500 million ABOVE THAT . . . for a fraction of the eyeballs.
     
  2. steveu

    steveu Well-Known Member

    A fraction of the eyeballs watching live TV. Live events are like gold to advertisers, because you can't watch sports on DVR. (Well, you CAN, but you get the idea.)
     
    I Should Coco and bigpern23 like this.
  3. JC

    JC Well-Known Member

    back in my day when nobody had a mortgage.....
     
  4. JC

    JC Well-Known Member

    Sports is the last thing that people watch live.
     
  5. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    Having two Wild Card slots helps keep half the fan bases involved through September.

    The TV ratings are in major erosion. I see it all the time in news. We have half the audience we had 30 years ago. Our answer? More inventory. Instead of 3 hours a day of news, we do six hours.

    Because of the secondary ticket market, baseball is far more affordable than the NFL. I also would be able 50 times more likely to take a kid to an MLB game than NFL.

    Will baseball attract millenials? Maybe. It actually is a decent sport to watch in person while you have a fully charged smart phone. You can use the phone between pitches. NFL isn't as laid back. Fans stand up on third down. Only real breaks are the endless commercials in the cold weather of the NFL season.
     
  6. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    Outside the NFL, any sport is going to lose on a ratings comparison. I also think casual sports fans are starting to lose interest in these early-round playoff games. Wake me up when there's an elimination game in the ALCS/NLCS.

    And as previously mentioned, great thread title. Hey Tom, if someone clicked on your piece, they're fans. Save the preamble.
     
  7. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    That's right on the mark. And in an era when pitchers threw strikes and the time between pitches wasn't 30-45 seconds, you didn't even need a smartphone in your hand to enjoy the game.

    The difference between today's fastest and slowest pitchers is more than a minute per plate appearance. Over the course of a game, two slow pitchers can add more than an hour to a game --- just because of their slow work habits. That's unacceptable.
     
  8. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    I don't know if the phone is a good argument or not. I'm buried in my phone as often as millennials at times, but at a ballgame I'll post a couple pictures and put it away. Otherwise I feel like I'm in a three-hour phone session interrupted by a ballgame, not the other way around.
     
  9. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Millennials seem to be on a 16-hour phone session every day, occasionally interrupted by life.
     
  10. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    Baseball is a content machine that's extremely well situated to sell into the bottomless pit of regional cable and Internet. The regular season games alone generate more than 7,000 hours that can be packaged and repackaged in countless ways.
     
  11. I Should Coco

    I Should Coco Well-Known Member

    Lots of good replies here. I'll add this: Baseball is the only sport among the "Big 4" leagues that is better to watch in person than on TV.

    College football is close in terms of at-game experience being better than TV, but those games (and pregames) aren't family-friendly. Baseball is a fun, low key and (relatively) affordable family outing.

    Of course, showing postseason games that don't end before midnight on the East Coast isn't too family friendly ...
     
  12. bigpern23

    bigpern23 Well-Known Member

    Disagree. NHL games are also a far superior experience in person than on TV. The NBA and NFL are far worse to watch in person.

    Seems like the amount of sideline entertainment is proportional to how good (or bad) the on-field product is. Hence, mascots, dancers, fan half-court shots, dunk exhibitions, etc., during the endless parade of NBA timeouts.
     
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